Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Yeah, I wasn't around for Part One in the late forties and there weren't blogs in the 80's for Part Two when video tape was going to kill them. But we are around for the Internet. The death of theatrical releases still hasn't proven true.

(An off-side is that at the beginning of the rennaisance, they thought the same thing of the printing press in relation to books. Really it was about controlling content and distribution. Also Books were going to be killed off by audio recordings and later video recordings, but we have more books published now, than ever before.)

Of course if they keep raising the price of tickets dramatically, they will kill Theatrical release. Well, that and playing crappy movies. They need to slash prices at the theaters by at least a third and food by maybe half.

As for movies this past year:

They say that the economy will now kill movies and that the movies aren't making money. What most people look at are the biggest box office hits and major losers. But it's more interesting to see #11, #12 & #17 for the year, since they're not F/X or Animation oriented.

#11 Sex and the CityBudget: $65 millionWorld Wide Box: $415,129,126 DVD sales: $85,376,850If you figure they take about 50% of all that, and subtract about $50,000,000 for advertising and prints; they made around $340,000,000 minus percentages for above the liners and residuals.

#12 Momma Mia!Budget: $52 millionWorld Wide Box: $572,225,617Figuring 50% of that, and subtracting $50 million for P&A; they made around $470,000,000 minus percentages.

Compare that to Dark KnightBudget: $185,000,000World-Wide Box: $996,889,925DVD Sales: $158,737,619Giving it a standard of $50 million for P&A. It did probably no better thatn Sex and the City around $340 million; though they'll get better merchandising.

By the same Calculations, Hancock did $250 million, IJ4 did $215 million, Kung Fu Panda did $195 million, Iron Man did about $135 million, Wally $105 million, Horton Hears a Who made $30 million, QOS, Mummy3 making up $ on the DVDs, Madagascar2 spent so much advertising that it will have to make it up in merchandising.

Twilight will be making a big splash, with a $37,000,000 budget and a box so far of $237,027,235 it's already in the black.

And not to forget #17 Juno at a tiny budget of $7 ends up with around $225 million.

Wanted turned around $110 million.

(Note all the above doesn't subtract above the line percentages of box nor residuals but also doesn't cover all other streams of income).

Point of the above, is that Big budgets sometimes equal smaller profits than lower budgeted films; which is not to say there aren't crappy low-budget films, or that there aren't great large budget films. But then there's sometimes ALOT of waste on large-budget productions and they aren't as challenged to be inventive to remain inside a smaller budget.

If you ever read on Hollywood accounting, it doesn't appear that any movies made money, but if they really didn't as often as Hollywood claims, the theaters would have closed years ago.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Went and saw The Spirit tonight. Very stylized. Very comic-like. If you can appreciate the theatrics of 60's batman, then you'll enjoy this. I liked the noir look. I'll post more on this later, so I don't spoil it for anyone. Overall, an okay movie ... just nothing to rave about. There are a couple things in it, though, that I'll rave about later (in a good way). It's a Frank Miller film so it's not just stylized, it VERY stylized. Everything Frank Miller does is over the top, that's his style.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

I'm not sure that this will benefit much of anyone except the largest studios. Their design is too closed. What actually occurs on HSX is probably a better system. More importantly, the reporting systems would have to be overhauled.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

I was up for way too many hours the last few days. I had a dream yesterday in my short sleep. I think it may end up as a comedic/fantasy. Y'know Princess Bride, Monty Python's Holy Grail, Willow ... that sort of thing. Now my keyboard is dying. It's ancient anyhow. The H and G keys are randomly not functioning. The N and M keys are almost worn away, with E being worn off soon.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

It's not that I'm not around, it's just that I haven't had sleep. And I need to take the dog to the vet today, and a dozen other things. I'm driving my sister to work because she hasn't had a vehicle for about 4 weeks. She was bad about protecting her information on the net, got her bank account cleared out ... twice, and then couldn't make payments on her truck. They repo'd it, and sold it, in under the time for state guidlines, so she can either find another vehicle or sue them for two years. Supposedly there's a good chance she'll have one by the weekend. But I've been running 2-3 times a day for that, plus runs for mom, plus meals for mom, plus trying to straighten things up.

*UGH*

It gets frustratingly difficult sometimes. One sister doesn't help, and just consumes, and is basically just a pain in the ass. The other is too consumed by her own problems, but at least she does dishes sometimes. I get to do the rest.

I know there's a contigent who wonder why I'm at home. I spent 10 years with my father and his cancer. It only was difficult in the last few years at the end. About a year after that, my mother went all Parkinson's and lost most of her vision. In between I went to school for computer technology. But then 9/11 happened and all the jobs went away, mostly outsourced to India. Then I was laid off, compounding multiple financial crisis. Et cetera, et al.

There were several other emotional roller-coasters in there, which I'm not blogging about right now. Basically, right now, I'm stuck. Stressed. Depressed. If it weren't for the internet, I'd probably implode.